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8 × 8: A Chess Sonata in 8 Movements (1957) is an American experimental film directed by Hans Richter, Marcel Duchamp, and Jean Cocteau released on March 15, 1957 in New York City. It features original music by Robert Abramson, John Gruen and Douglas Townsend.Described by Richter as "part Freud, part Lewis Carroll", it is a fairy tale for the subconscious based on the game of chess.While living in New York, Hans Richter directed two feature films, Dreams That Money Can Buy and 8x8: A Chess Sonata in collaboration with Max Ernst, Cocteau, Paul Bowles, Fernand Léger, Alexander Calder, Duchamp, and others, which was partially filmed on the lawn of his summer house in Southbury, Connecticut.

Chess world champion Centowic wants to travel by ship to an important chess tournament. The ship, however, starts behind schedule, because a mysterious and obviously anxious passenger, who is on his way to the port with Bishop Ambrosse, is expected.During the trip, passengers ask grumpy Centowic to play a chess game, which he reluctantly agrees to. Centowic's opponents are about to lose the match. However, the mysterious passenger, who accidentally joins the scene, intervenes and helps them to turn the match into a draw. Centowic is amazed to not have ever seen the stranger, who, as he says, has just had his first chess piece in his hands, at any important tournament.A flashback tells the stranger's story: He is Werner von Basil, an Austrian lawyer. Together with Bishop Ambrosse, he hides art treasures abroad in order to protect them from the national socialists who had just occupied Austria. Von Basil doesn't take the bishop's warnings about the threat for him too seriously. On a party given by von Basil, the newly inaugurated Gestapo man, Hans Berger engages ballet dancer Irene Andreny, who is his girlfriend, to learn from von Basil where the art treasures are. When she is unsuccessful, Berger has von Basil arrested the same evening. In order to break von Basil's will, Berger puts him into solitary confinement. Von Basil has all his personal belongings taken from him; the only variety in his every-day routine is the guardian who provides him with food.Berger is pressured not only by Irene, who feels neglected, but also by his superior Hartmann, as von Basil keeps the hiding-place of the art treasures a secret even after six weeks of isolation. As von Basil pretends to be cooperative and is brought to a questioning, he succeeds in stealing a book from a coat pocket. In the questioning, von Basil drops Berger in it and feels the sympathy the present Irene feels for him. Back again in his room, von Basil is disappointed to learn that the book he has stolen just deals with chess matches. Due to a lack of alternatives, von Basil reads it and uses pieces of bread as chess pieces to re-enact the chess matches described in the book. Even as Berger discovers his secret and deprives him of the book, von Basil plays chess against himself in his mind.After asking bishop Ambrosse for help, Irene begs Berger to release von Basil but is insulted by Berger. As von Basil suffers from a nervous breakdown but still refuses to reveal his secrets, Hartmann now tries on his own to break von Basil's will.As von Basil plays yet another match against Centowic, he furiously attacks Centowic, as he wants to learn form Centowic how much information he gave away during his solitary confinement. Irene joins the scene and is able to assure von Basil that he revealed none of his secrets. Irene was spared harassment; Berger was no longer of use for his superiors. Von Basil and Irene fall in love with each other.

Chess in a nutshell is a story of young man who is thrown into the deep end where sharks of the society swim with nonchalance.Dileep plays the lead role of Vijayakrishnan, whose background is music and other fine arts. But suddenly he gets catapulted into the cruel city life where there is little time for niceties. Vijayakrishnan, in the cruel roll of fate's dice, is pitted against heartless men in khakhis. The schemers kill Vijayakrishnan's father and burn his mother to death. Then they wound Vijayakrishnan badly and leave him to die. The rest of the story is about Vijayakrishnan's revenge on the people who murdered his parents. To do this he acts as a blind man and then one by one he kills the schemers.

Chess Fever (Russian: Шахматная горячка) is a 1925 Soviet silent comedy film directed by Vsevolod Pudovkin and Nikolai Shpikovsky. Chess Fever is a comedy about Moscow 1925 chess tournament, made by Pudovkin during the pause in the filming of Mechanics of the Brain[1]. The film combines acted parts with the actual footage from the tournament.

Shatranj Ke Khilari (The Chess Players) is a 1977 Indian film by Bengali director Satyajit Ray, based on Munshi Premchand's short story of the same name. Amjad Khan plays the role of Avadh king Wajid Ali Shah, and Richard Attenborough plays the role of General James Outram. The film also features the actors Sanjeev Kumar, Saeed Jaffrey, Shabana Azmi, David Abraham and Tom Alter.Unlike most of Ray's films, the dialogue in the film is in Urdu and Hindi. There is little dialogue but the fastidious research and sophisticated portrayal of clashing cultures earned acclaim from both film critics and historians of the period.The film is set in 1856 and shows the life and customs of 19th century India on the eve of the Indian rebellion of 1857. The focus is on events surrounding the British annexation of the Indian State of Awadh (also spelt Oudh), the politics of colonial expansion by the British East India Company and the deluded divisions of Indian monarchs.The Chess Players employed stars of the Bombay cinema (Amjad Khan, Shabana Azmi and Amitabh Bachan as a narrator) together with Western actors such as Richard Attenborough. Much of the film was shot on location in Lucknow and Rajasthan. Ray was so impressed with Amitabh Bachchan that he decided to use his voice as commentary in Shatranj Ke Khiladi since he did not find any suitable role for him. [1]The film went on to win three Filmfare Awards, including the Critics Award for Best Movie, and was a nominee for the Golden Bear for Best Film at the 28th Berlin International Film Festival.[2]

Dangerous Moves is a 1984 French-language film about chess, directed by Richard Dembo and starring Michel Piccoli and Alexandre Arbatt. Its original French title is La diagonale du fou ("The Fool's Diagonal", referring to the chess piece called the bishop in English but the fool in French). The film was a co-production between companies in France and Switzerland. It tells the story of two very different men competing in the World Chess Championship Games. One is a 52-year-old Soviet Jew who holds the title, and the other is a 35-year-old genius who defected to the West several years earlier.

s a 2003 documentary film by Vikram Jayanti about the match between Garry Kasparov, the highest rated chess player in history and the World Champion for 15 years (1985–2000), and Deep Blue, a chess-playing computer created by IBM.In 1997, Kasparov played his second chess match against Deep Blue, a computer designed specifically to beat Kasparov in chess. In the second game, Kasparov set a trap that most computers fall for. Deep Blue didn't fall for it. From this experience, Kasparov suspected IBM, the creator of Deep Blue, of cheating by using a human player during the game to increase the strategic strength of the computer. As a metaphor for this suspicion, the film weaves in the story of the Turk, a hoax involving a chess-playing automaton built in the eighteenth century, but secretly operated by human beings. (The film also implies that Deep Blue's heavily promoted victory was a ploy by IBM to boost its market value.) Deep Blue went on to win the match in the sixth game, marking the first time in history that a computer defeated the World Champion in a match of several games.The film was nominated for a 2003 International Documentary Association award. It was coproduced by Alliance Atlantis and the National Film Board of Canada.

The Great Chess Movie (original French title Jouer sa vie) is a 1982 Canadian film directed by Gilles Carle and Camille Coudari, starring Bobby Fischer, Viktor Korchnoi, Anatoly Karpov and Ljubomir Ljubojevic among other notable chess players.The 80-minute documentary is produced by the National Film Board of Canada (NFB).[edit]

The film revolves around a sibling rivalry between two brothers, Hershell and Thadeus Graves (played by Gonzales and Tiga, respectively), as they compete during a game of chess. Peaches plays Marsha Thirteen, a former performance artist and the shared love interest of both brothers.[4]

They met only once, but back in 1972 David & Peter had left lasting impressions on one another, for one of them was stabbed continually with a fountain pen, leaving him with everlasting bodily scars. As for the other, his savage attack on his childhood opponent after his public humiliation and defeat was a catalyst that ended his parent's marriage, as his father left forever; his offspring discovered his mother dying, having been slashed with a broken bottle. This boy spent the next twenty years in and out of asylums and foster care. Now it seems he's become one of the youngest, most successful chess grandmasters in history. Brilliant if troubled widower with a precious daughter, he suddenly finds himself a suspect in his casual lover's murder. When more homicides occur Capt. Frank Sedman and his partner Det. Andy Wagner discover that a serial killer is at work on the New England island. With our chessmaster becoming more and more connected to the deaths, shrink Kathy Sheppard is brought in to figure out if this chess prodigy is as innocent as he claims to be.

The movie is based on the true story of David MacEnulty[1] who taught schoolchildren of the Bronx Community Elementary School 70 to play at competition level, eventually winning New York City and the New York State Chess Championships . The screenplay portrays whistle-blowing and a mid-life crisis that combine to remove Richard Mason (played by Ted Danson) from his old life. He becomes a substitute teacher and is assigned to a fourth-grade class in a South Bronx school. In the class are students with parents who are drug addicts or in jail or just scrambling to pay the bills. Few of them see a purpose in school other than meeting society's requirements, and he struggles, mostly in vain, to reach them.Then a student whose father is in jail sees Mason in the park playing a simultaneous exhibition, and beating fourteen opponents at once. He asks to learn the game. One thing leads to another, and soon the entire class is interested in the game. Mason convinces them that on the chessboard it doesn't matter how much money you have or what clothes you're wearing or where you come from, and that it's only the moves you make, then and there. The class forms a team to compete in ever-larger tournaments.

It's the early 1920s and Aleksandr Ivanovich 'Sascha' Luzhin (Turturro), a gifted but tormented chess player, arrives in a Northern Italian city to compete in an international chess competition. Prior to the tournament he meets Natalia Katkov (Watson) and he falls in love with her almost immediately. She in turn finds his manner to be appealing and they begin to see each other in spite of her mother's disapproval.Competing alongside Luzhin in the championship is Dottore Salvatore Turati (Fabio Sartor), who is approached by Leo Valentinov (Stuart Wilson), a Russian, who is Luzhin's former chess tutor from pre-revolutionary Russia. Valentinov tells the Italian that Luzhin cannot handle pressure and he intimates he will make sure that his former prodigy will be unsettled off-table giving Turati a winning chance.The competition starts badly for Luzhin who is unsettled by the presence of his former friend and coach. He struggles through the early rounds but he soon begins to win again as his relationship with Katkov becomes closer and intimate. She then informs her parents that she is going to marry him. Meanwhile Luzhin goes onto reach the final and face Turati.

Luzhin and TuratiBut in the finals the Russian Émigré loses out to the time clock, forcing the game to adjourn. However, outside the venue, he is whisked away by an accomplice of Valentinov who abandons him in the countryside. His former teacher knows that this will completely unhinge him because of the memory of his parents' abandonment many years ago. Luzhin wanders aimlessly until he collapses and is found by a group of Blackshirts.Luzhin is taken to the hospital suffering from complete mental exhaustion. The doctor informs Katkov that he will die if he keeps playing chess as he is addicted to the game and it's consuming his very being. Nevertheless even while recuperating Valentinov comes around with a chess board encouraging Luzhin to finish the match with the Italian, Turati.Eventually Luzhin leaves the hospital. He and Natalia then agree to marry at the earliest opportunity. However on the morning of the wedding, Luzhin is put into a car with Valentinov, who tells him that there is the small matter of finishing the competition. In terror, Luzhin leaps from the car. Dazed, cut and mentally confused, he stumbles back to the hotel where he tries to dig up a glass chess piece in the grounds, one which he buried years ago, but he does not find it.Luzhin, who is in his muddied wedding suit, sits in his room as Natalia and the hotel staff try to open the door. But before they can get in, the troubled chess grandmaster throws himself out of his bedroom window and dies. The tragic death is witnessed by Valentinov who has just arrived by car.The film then concludes in the competition hall where Natalia completes the competition using her fiance's notes. Turati does exactly what Luzhin expected and loses. Katkov and Turati then leave acknowledging the Pyrrhic victory and the genius of Luzhin.

The end of the world is imminent. A man goes into a parallel dimension, a limbo between reality and fantasy where the normal rules of time and space have ceased to apply. [1] His wife goes to rescue him.[2] Both will be trapped in a strange and cruel world where a ruthless Queen organizes reality as a mad game of chess, a post-apocalyptic dystopia of domination and subjugation where characters can’t eat, speak or move about freely and are periodically viciously attacked.[3][edit]

Davey, a talented young chess player and Wil Bevan, his history teacher are in Bournemouth for the British Chess Championships. When Davey meets up with Helen, a punk girl from London, Wil is faced with the problem of steering his charge through the championship and the trauma of first love.

The film stars Sandrine Bonnaire as a French chambermaid on the island of Corsica. She develops an interest in chess. She has been cleaning the house of an American doctor (played by Kevin Kline in his first French-speaking role), and he begins helping her practice and improve. She must deal with her growing fascination with the game and with her husband and teenaged daughter.

In the film, Josh Waitzkin's family discovers that he possesses a gift for chess and they seek to nurture it. They hire a strict instructor, Bruce Pandolfini (played by Ben Kingsley) who aims to teach the boy to be as aggressive as Bobby Fischer. The title of the film is a metaphor about the character's quest to adopt the ideal of Fischer and his determination to win at any price. Josh is also heavily influenced by Vinnie, a "speed chess" hustler (Laurence Fishburne) whom he met in Washington Square Park. The two instructors differ greatly in their strategies, and Pandolfini is upset that Josh continues to learn from Vinnie. The main conflict in the film arises when Josh refuses to adopt Fischer's misanthropic frame of reference. Josh then goes on to win on his own terms with the kind of gracious sportsmanship that Fischer rejects.

Disillusioned knight Antonius Block (Max von Sydow) and his squire Jöns (Gunnar Björnstrand) return after fighting in the Crusades and find Sweden being ravaged by the plague. On the beach immediately after their arrival, Block encounters Death (Bengt Ekerot), personified as a pale, black-cowled figure resembling a monk. Block, in the middle of a chess game he has been playing alone, challenges Death to a chess match, believing that he can forestall his demise as long as the game continues. Death agrees, and they start a new game.The other characters in the story do not see Death, and when the chess board comes out at various times in the story, they believe Block is continuing his habit of playing alone.

Death and Antonius Block choose sides for the chess game; Death gets the black pieces.Block and Jöns head for Block's castle. Along the way, they pass some actors, Jof and his wife Mia, with their baby son, Mikael, and their actor-manager, Skat. Jof has visions, but Mia is skeptical.The knight and the squire enter a church where a fresco of the Dance of Death is being painted. Jöns draws a small figure representing himself. "This is squire Jöns. He grins at Death; his world is a Jöns-world, believable only to himself, ridiculous to all including himself, meaningless to Heaven and of no interest to Hell."[4] Block tells someone he mistakes for a priest in the confessional booth, "I met Death today. We are playing chess." He confides, "My life has been a futile pursuit, a wandering, a great deal of talk without meaning. I feel no bitterness or self-reproach because the lives of most people are very much like this. But I will use my reprieve for one meaningful deed."[5] After giving away his strategy in the chess game, Block discovers that his listener is Death. Leaving the church, Block speaks with a young woman who has been condemned to be burnt alive for supposedly consorting with the Devil, but is likely to have been raped by a priest.Shortly thereafter, Jöns searches an abandoned village for water. He saves a servant girl (Gunnel Lindblom) from being raped by a man robbing a corpse. He recognises Raval, a theologian, who ten years ago had convinced Antonius to leave his wife and join a crusade to the Holy Land. Jöns promises to brand Raval on the face if they meet again. The girl joins Jöns. The trio ride into town, where the little acting troupe is performing. Skat introduces Jof and Mia to the crowd, then is enticed by Lisa, the blacksmiths wife, away for a tryst. They run off together. Jof and Mia's performance is interrupted by the arrival of a procession of flagellants.At a public house, Jof comes across Raval. Raval forces Jof to dance on the tables like a bear. Jöns appears and, true to his word, slices Raval's face.[6] Block enjoys a country picnic of milk and wild strawberries gathered by Mia. Block says: "I'll carry this memory between my hands as if it were bowl filled to the brim with fresh milk...And it will be an adequate sign – it will be enough for me."[7] He invites the actors to his castle, where they will be safer from the plague.Along the way, they come across Skat and Lisa in the forest. Lisa, dissatisfied with Skat, returns to her husband. After the others leave, Skat climbs a tree for the night. Death starts cutting down the tree, informing the actor that his "time is up." When Skat pleads that there must be "special rules for actors", Death responds that Skat's "performance is cancelled on account of death".[8]They come across the condemned young woman again. The knight demands of a monk, "What have you done with the child?" Death asks, "Do you never stop asking questions?" Block answers, "No. Never."[9] Block asks the woman again to summon Satan, so he can ask him about God. The girl claims already to have done so, but Block cannot see him, only her terror. He gives her herbs to take away her pain.[10]Raval reappears. Dying of the plague, he pleads for water. The servant girl attempts to bring him some, but is stopped by Jöns. Jof tells Mia that he can see the knight playing chess with Death, and decides to flee with his family while Death is preoccupied.[11]After hearing Death state "No one escapes me" Block knocks the chess pieces over, distracting Death while the family slips away. Death places the pieces back on the board, then wins the game on the next move. He announces that when they meet again, Block's time—and that of all those travelling with him—will be up. Before departing, Death asks if Block has accomplished his one "meaningful deed" yet; Block replies that he has.

The final scene depicting the "danse macabre".The knight is reunited with his wife, the sole occupant of his castle, all the servants having fled. The party shares one "last supper" before Death comes for them. Block prays to God, "Have mercy on us, because we are small and frightened and ignorant."[12]Meanwhile, the little family sits out a storm, which Jof interprets to be "the Angel of Death and he's very big." The next morning, Jof, with his second sight, sees the knight and his followers being led away over the hills in a solemn dance of death. "They bear away from their light, while their strict lord Death bids them to dance... and the rain washes, and cleanses the salt of their tears from their cheeks."[13] Mia chides him. "You with your visions and dreams."

Karl and Tom are long time friends; who meet each morning to play chess in the park. However, shortly after a chance meeting with a young man, Tom dies. In an attempt to avoid the grief of Tom's death, Karl rids himself of the Chess Set and cuts himself off from everything and everyone. But strange happenings with the Chess Set lead him to an unexpected friendship and hope for the future. The Chess Set is a gentle story of grief, friendship and renewed hope. Written by Murawski, Alex

In 1968, Stanley Kubrick (a strong chess player himself) directed 2001: A Space Odyssey. It is probably the most famous man vs. computer chess games in film. The movie features an astronaut, Dr. Frank Poole (played by Gary Lockwood), playing a chess game with the white pieces against the HAL-9000 computer (voice by Douglas Rain). The game in the movie is from an actual game, Roesch vs. Schlage, Hamburg 1910. The initial position in the movie is after Black’s 13th move. The astronaut says, “Umm…anyway, Queen takes pawn. OK?” HAL responds, “Bishop takes Knight’s pawn.” The astronaut says “Hmm, that’s a good move. Er…Rook to King One.” HAL responds, “I’m sorry Frank. I think you missed it. Queen to Bishop Three (this should have been Queen to Bishop Six - the computer was cheating). Bishop takes Queen (this is not forced). Knight takes Bishop. Mate.” It is not a mate in two, but a mate in three. The astronaut responds, “Ah…Yeah, looks like you’re right. I resign.” The moves are said in English descriptive instead of the universal algebraic notation.